One Saturday night a few weeks ago, friends tipped us off that Butler's Orchard had snap peas and blueberries and black raspberries all ready to go at once. Needless to say, we canceled all other plans for the next day, and by 8:30 am Sunday morning, we were off to the races.

Blueberries are awesome to pick with an 18-month old. They free from the bush easily, they're plentiful at toddler height, and us oldies can reach the higher ones and save our backs while the kid gets the low-hanging fruit. We came home with 5 pounds of blueberries, 5 pounds of black raspberries, and stains just about everywhere.

If you've seen me in the past few weeks and expressed even vague interest in Asian food and/or cooking, I've probably bored you to tears gushing on about the best cookbook of the year (IMHO), 101 Easy Asian Recipes. The title is both accurate and a bit tongue-in-cheek, since it makes the book sound like something fusion-y and inauthentic and terrible, when in fact, it inauthentic, and unabashedly so, and wonderful. The back of the book has big speech bubbles boasting "100% inauthentic" and "very good" and "easy, really." It's fab.

The book comes from Peter Meehan, who has worked with David Chang (Momofuku) and Danny Bowein (Mission Chinese) for years, co-authored the Momofuku cookbook, and now edits Lucky Peach magazine. He's clearly a meticulous guy who gets how Asian food works -- the balance of flavors, the precision with cooking times, etc. But this book takes a step away from the "this has 500 ingredients/steps, but it's worth it"-style of recipes, opting instead for formulas that follow two important ground rules: no deep-frying, and no recipes within recipes. The rationale: Asian food isn't just for Sunday projects, it's for weeknight dinner with kids. Good bless you, Peter Meehan.

've had this Thai glutinous rice sitting in the bottom of my cupboard for months, but never quite worked up the guts to make it into something until, a few weeks ago, the waiter at our little Laotian spot in the neighborhood told me that sticky rice may be the easiest thing on their menu to make at home. That doesn't necessarily say much, considering the menu includes items like crispy rice salad (involving rice that's cooked, mixed with other stuff, formed into balls, deep-fried, broken into pieces, and tossed with a gazillion other ingredients, which I know only because I've made it and whoa, pain in the butt doesn't even start). Still: "easier" was motivation enough not to let that rice sit untouched.

Not a full post today, but a bunch of odds and ends that I've been meaning to share.

Marmalading: That's what kept me out of trouble and away from insanity during our two-ish weeks of hibernation under an impenetrable and, apparently, unplowable 30 inches of snow. (Attention DC officials: occasionally, it snows here. Surprise! Buy another plow or two.) Fortunately, my fridge was chock-full of citrus you've never heard us, because Cathy went to Texas for a marathon series of cooking classes, and her trip coincided with Central Market's wonderful Citrus Festival, and she is a goddess and a wonderful friend and a crazy lover of citrus like yours truly. (I paid her in Barcelonian anchovies, yes). For most of last weekend, our home smelled like a heavenly mix of chartreuse hot cocoa (thank you Pam!) and boiling citrus peel. Not shabby. Not shabby at all.